


Superhero in Disguise (the Pen is Mightier than the Battlestar Remix)

by Isis



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, Remix, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Communications Officer Louis Hoshi has a secret identity, so to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superhero in Disguise (the Pen is Mightier than the Battlestar Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Broken Skies, Broken Sunsets](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48080) by lls_mutant. 



"Give that back!" cried Millie. She reached toward the book, but Louis batted her hands away.

"Studying for your history class, right. This," he said, brandishing the book – its lurid cover showed a girl in a long red dress swooning in the arms of a handsome man in what he supposed was intended to be a military uniform – "does not look like anything _I_ learned in history."

She stuck out her chin. "I know the lesson. You can quiz me if you want. The levees along the Acheron were first built after the catastrophic flooding in 1126 AE which destroyed Parga and did serious damage to the granaries outside Tawa. They were made with stone from the –"

"All right, you know your history lesson," he interrupted. He had to suppress a smile at his sister's perfect recital; in her voice he could hear the tone of Teacher Kashek, who had been Louis' teacher as well, when he had been Millie's age. But still, she shouldn't be reading garbage when she was meant to be studying. "What about mathematics? Religion?"

"I've finished all my homework. Quit bugging me and give me back my book. No, stop, don't _read_ it!" Her voice rose to a shriek, and she jumped up out of her chair, reaching for him again, but he dodged, laughing, and looked at the page he'd idly flipped to while they had been talking.

"'Her bosom heaved as she panted luxuriously toward him' – Gods, Millie, is it all as bad as that?"

"It's not _bad_!"

"No, you're right," he said, riffling through a few more pages. "It's downright terrible. How in all the worlds do you pant _luxuriously_? And this: 'Don't leave me,' she sobbed traumatically, throwing herself at his feet hoping he would sweep her up in his strong arms and sweep her away to his palace high atop the Forare mountains where she would have servants to do her bidding and eat nothing but strawberries and the most delicate of cream." He rolled his eyes. "This is ludicrous."

She glared at him. " _You_ don't know anything about how women act. Not that you even care."

He ignored her barb. So he preferred men; that wasn't her business. "It's not about women. It's about writing." He might not know women, but he did know writing. He was a communications officer, and writing was, after all, a form of communications. _Sobbed traumatically_ , for all the gods. "Even I could write something better than this garbage."

"As if."

"Is that a challenge?"

She burst out laughing. "You could never! I bet you can't write anything other than computer code. Ones and zeros. Military gobbledygook. 'He buttoned up his uniform and strode away to the brig where he could be with his true love, the ship's computer system.'"

"The _bridge_ , Millie!" he said, but he was laughing, too. When he'd first joined the Colonial Fleet there had been tears and recrimination; the military was not considered an appropriate career for a Sagittaron. If his little sister could make fun of his profession, that was a huge step forward. Maybe his family had finally come to terms with it. "The brig's the jail, you silly bird. And how could he make love with a computer?"

"Just – just plug it in!" She was giggling uncontrollably now, her face red, her hair falling around her face. 

"Millie!" He pretended to be scandalized, though he shouldn't be, really. She was nearly finished with school; soon she'd be taking the exams and finding a job, maybe getting married. She was growing up fast. It seemed faster now that he lived on Picon, where he worked at Fleet Headquarters, and only came back to visit his family two or three times a year. He'd applied for a shipboard position, the next step of promotion, and if he got one he'd probably see her even less frequently. The thought sobered him suddenly.

She wiped tears of laughter from her face. "All right, Louis. If you ever do write a romance novel, I get a free copy, right?"

"Right," he said. "Meanwhile, you can get back to your schoolwork." He turned to the door.

"What about my book?"

He hefted it in one hand, grinned at her. "Research," he said, closing the door on her yelps of protest.

* * *

It really was a terrible book. He hadn't even managed to finish reading it. Not only did the writer – 'Selena Fortuna', that _had_ to be a pen name – have a shaky grasp on grammar and the meaning of words longer than two syllables, but she clearly didn't know a thing about the Colonial Fleet. The hero's rank didn't exist, and his exploits on the fictional Battlestar _Gorgonia_ were frankly impossible. And what was the scion of a well-to-do Leonan family doing in the fleet, anyway?

He _could_ write something better than this. Millie would make an excellent heroine; well, not Millie, but someone like Millie, only older. Well, someone like himself, really. Only female, obviously. And for a hero, well. Hadn't he been fantasizing for years about that hot pilot candidate he'd met at the academy? Davin had been his name; he was smart and funny and wore a black leather jacket, and unfortunately was completely and extravagantly straight. He was probably on the Viper crew on some battlestar or the other, now, but Louis could still visualize his broad shoulders, his curly dark hair that was kept just barely within military-mandated length, his…well. 

He turned on his computer, and began to write. _Molly didn't want to come back to Sagittaron. But when she received the news that her father had been killed in a mining accident, she knew she'd have to give up her dream…_

It wasn't hard to do, he decided, writing a romance novel. It was actually kind of fun. But he'd managed only four chapters by the time his leave was over, and he'd had to ship back to Fleet HQ with a half-finished document on his drive; no telling when he'd have the time to write any more, once he was back at work. He'd given the novel back to his sister – _after_ copying the publisher's name and address.

He hadn't been back at Fleet HQ for long when he got his promotion, and orders to report to the Battlestar _Pegasus_. Admiral Cain, his new commander, was a bit of a hard-ass, but he soon realized that she was fair, and appreciated hard work and swift thinking. And she recognized that Louis was a conscientious officer who would do his duty, and do it well. The rest of his time was his own. 

It turned out that there was less to do on board than there had been planetside at headquarters. So in his off-hours, he wrote. Quietly, on his own; if someone asked, he'd say he was writing a letter to his sister back on Sagittaron, or putting together a report. 

'Molly' and 'Darrin' made it through to their happy ending, and Louis was half-tempted just to transmit it to Millie and be done with it. It wasn't as though he needed to write novels to earn a living – he had a good job in the Colonial Fleet, after all, and even a recent promotion. But…it _was_ a better novel than that trashy book Millie had been reading, he was sure of it. And in a weird way, he was proud of it. Why not share it with the worlds?

When the message came back from the publisher, he almost didn't want to open it. What if the book wasn't as good as he'd thought? What if the publisher had taken one look at his name and decided that a man couldn't write about romance? What if they'd noticed he was on the _Pegasus_ and contacted Admiral Cain? (That last thought made him shudder.)

_Infinity Books would be pleased to offer you our standard publishing contract_ , he read, and all the breath whooshed out of his lungs. He couldn't help but grin as his eyes scanned down the message.

"Good news from home, Hoshi?" said Captain Thornton as he passed by, and instinctively Louis tilted the screen so it wasn't visible. 

"My sister passed her exams," he said blandly, and Thornton nodded and kept going.

There were only two changes the publisher wanted to make. Well, there were more than two – their editor had attached a draft pointing out various small problems, but there were two major changes. The first was the title: _Alone in the Desert_ was apparently the title of another book from a rival publishing company. To avoid confusion, the publisher recommended changing the title to _Desert Kisses_. Okay, he could live with that.

The second was more problematic. It wouldn't have been prudent to publish under his real name, of course. But he wanted Millie to know he'd met her challenge, so he'd suggested the pen name 'Louis Miller' – she'd get a kick out of the subtle combination of their two names, he was sure. Unfortunately, the publisher objected.

_Our romance line is strictly the province of women, both as readers and as writers. Will 'Louise Miller' serve, or would you prefer to choose another pseudonym?_

It wouldn't serve. Admittedly it was only a tiny change from his initial suggestion, but it was far enough from his real name that Millie would not be convinced. He tapped the keys thoughtfully. Maybe an anagram?

_Desert Kisses_ – by 'Shiloh Usoi' – was published not long after, and gleefully Louis arranged for a copy to be delivered to his sister. He'd won their informal bet, but more importantly, he'd found something he really enjoyed doing. He wrote a second book, which Infinity Books published as well; then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.

The books earned him a steady extra income, which he had sent to his family on Sagittaron – he didn't need anything other than his military pay. What was even better than the money were the occasional letters from readers, with compliments on his writing: on his "wonderful portrayal of real Sagittaron culture," on his "incredibly sexy love scenes," and once (making him laugh so hard that tears streamed down his face, and a concerned NCO asked him if he was okay, which only made him laugh harder) on his "obvious wealth of experience and understanding of what it means to be a woman in our society."

Best of all had been Millie's reaction, of course, when she learned that he'd won their bet. 

And then the Cylons attacked, and the _Pegasus_ jumped blind out of the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards, and the universe as they knew it was ruthlessly destroyed.

* * *

They were all lost in the horror of what had happened, at first. Everybody except for Admiral Cain; if she grieved for family, friends, or lovers, she hid it well. But her iron control was what the people of the _Pegasus_ needed, and gradually the crew pulled themselves together to face the new situation they had been thrust into by the Cylons.

Louis did his best to lose himself in the work of helping to coordinate the repairs to the ship, of plotting the Cylons' locations, of keeping the CIC informed of everything that went on throughout the _Pegasus_ and the small fleet of civilians they'd found. It helped, somewhat. But he found himself chafing at his orders, and it was hard to bite his tongue in the face of the peremptory way the Admiral treated the civilians. 

So again, he wrote. He began with angry screeds – against the Cylons, against the Admiral, against the gods – all of which he deleted before leaving his workstation. He started a literary novel about good and evil, and twenty pages in, deleted that as well. He tried to write a sonnet, but the rhymes defeated him. Finally he turned to what he knew, and began his sixth romance novel.

Not that anyone else would read it. Infinity Books was gone, along with Millie, and everyone and everything else in the Colonies. But this was for himself; this was his therapy, and by all the gods, he needed it.

Two chapters. Three. It came more slowly than the others, because everyone, including himself, was occupied with the business of fighting back against the Cylons, of keeping themselves alive. After all, they were the only humans in the galaxy. 

And then, suddenly, they weren't.

The discovery of the _Galactica_ and its straggling herd of civilian ducklings changed everything. As one battlestar with a depleted crew, the _Pegasus_ had to concentrate on survival, nothing more. And that survival was necessarily limited by their resources, which would, inevitably, run out. No wonder the Admiral had been focused on vengeance; with no possible future, they would do what damage they could before they died.

But now there were twenty times as many men and women, and several dozen ships – transports, mining ships, refineries, factories. Ships that could obtain raw materials from the planetoids around them, and convert them into the things necessary for life. It was a strange adjustment to make, from going down fighting to the realization that perhaps there was no need to go down at all. 

* * *

Lieutenant Heiber came into the junior officers' lounge with a gleeful grin on her face and a large carry-bag in her arms. "Look what I got!" 

She dumped the contents onto the table, and everyone clustered around to see. Twenty or so books, and you'd think they were made of pure platinum the way everyone reached for them. "Wait a frakking minute," she snapped, slapping away a couple hands. "I get first dibs, since I was the one who traded for them."

"You traded _our_ books, too," said Captain Bohannon. "Not just yours. And you can't read all of them at once."

"We'll all get a chance at them," promised Heiber. "And then we'll take them back in to the library, and see what else has turned up."

Calling it a library was a bit of an exaggeration, thought Louis. It was really only a swap room that had been set up on the passenger liner _Chrion_ by one of the civilians who'd been on that ship. Bring a book, take a book. But every book on the Pegasus – and there hadn't been many that weren't technical manuals or military texts – had been read, in some cases multiple times, by everyone who liked to read in their down time, and everyone had been excited about the prospect of swapping for new ones.

"Okay, I'm starting with the Fremont." Tom Fremont had written a series of sweeping historical novels, one set on each of the colonies. "Those of you who turned in books to trade can pick next, after that you can all go wild."

Hands scrabbled among the covers, and voices rose. Louis hadn't had any books to trade, but he reached out instinctively when he saw a familiar cover.

"You read romance novels?" said Bohannon in his ear, sounding amused.

"Is that what that that one is?" said Louis quickly, snatching his hand back. " _Colonial Honor_ , um. I thought it might be an adventure."

"Oh, it's an adventure, all right," said Heiber. "I read it a couple years ago. It's an adventure in lo-ove."

"Who said romance novel?" demanded one of the female Raptor pilots. She picked the book off the table and scrutinized the cover, which showed a tall woman in a surprisingly accurate depiction of an officer's uniform – he'd given the publisher the details, and stood his ground – gazing through a port at a planet beyond. "Hey, it's set on a battlestar! Is it any good?"

"It was all right. Of course, it makes serving in the fleet look a lot better than it really is."

The pilot shrugged. "Hey, what do you expect? It's fiction, right? I bet the author –" she squinted at the cover – "this Shiloh Usoi, she's never been off-planet in her life."

_You'd be surprised_ , thought Louis. He didn't know whether he wanted to protest, or to burst out laughing; either would be a bad idea, though, so he schooled his face into a bland expression and pretended to look through the other books as he listened to the two women. 

"That's for sure," agreed Heiber. "I mean, the heroine's a Sagittaron who joins the fleet. Talk about unrealistic! But at least the author's done her homework. The layout of HQ's just like it really is – that is, was, back on Picon, and the description of life on the battlestar's pretty accurate. Though unfortunately," she added, tapping the book with a fingernail, "in all my time on _Pegasus_ I've never served with anyone nearly as good-looking or interesting as these characters."

Louis felt his face going red. He'd read a few more romance novels, after the one he'd snagged from Millie – scoping out the competition – and he'd lay a hundred cubits on his stories being the most realistic on matters both Sagittaron and military. And as far as the characters, well. Heiber had certainly served with some of them; Louis had written half the crew into his books, one way or the other. 

"She's a good writer, though," continued Heiber. "Or at least she was. A pity there won't be any more of her books coming out."

The two women headed out of the room, and Louis turned back to the pile of books. But he noticed the pilot had taken _Colonial Honor_ with her.

* * *

The books from the _Chrion_ library were circulated around the ship, returned, and new ones brought in. Just like our food and water, thought Louis; algae production and water recycling would keep them going until they could find a planet that would let them replenish their stocks with real food and new water. But they wouldn't last indefinitely – not the food and water, and not the books, either. 

After a while, there weren't any new books to exchange for. Everything had been read and reread, passed along and read again. You could sometimes find someone with a private stash and trade for a book you hadn't seen before, but that was rare. 

_The Admiral's Daughter_ was almost finished. At first, after Admiral Cain had been killed, Louis hadn't wanted to look at his manuscript, let alone work on it. She had been the basis for the titular Admiral, and he still felt uncomfortable about the events that had unfolded. But the discovery of the rest of the fleet had given him a lot of ideas for the book – and introduced him to a lot of new people to be models for his characters. Under the disaster that had been Commander Garner, he'd had no time to write, but once Lee Adama was named Commander – the extremely good-looking Lee Adama, who would hopefully never know he was the inspiration for the book's love interest – Louis made a lot of progress.

He was having a drink at one of the lounges, enjoying a rare leave, when a thought occurred to him. He called the bartender over and tapped his bottle.

"This isn't actual Virgon Brew, is it?"

The bartender looked cagy. "It's beer. Isn't that enough?"

"But it wasn't actually brewed on Virgon. Right?"

"Virgon's long gone, man. I think this one was brewed on, hmm." The bartender looked at the bottle he'd set in front of Louis, which had a genuine-looking Virgon Brew label. " _Diomedes_. They're using the old Virgon bottles. The brewery on _Harrak_ has been printing their own labels, but it's a harder sell, 'cause everyone wants Virgon. Between you and me, though, the _Harrak_ stuff is better."

"Printing labels," repeated Louis. He'd just been thinking about the brewing part, not the labeling part. But both aspects were evidence that the additional resources of the larger fleet were allowing the scattered remnants of the Twelve Colonies to create new things, not just recycle old things; to not just survive, but thrive. "Is there a printer in the fleet?"

"Three or four, I think. We use the one on the _Aurora_ to do our menus."

"Huh." He filed the information in his memory. Three or four, imagine that. "You think they'd print a book?"

"You a writer?" 

Louis gave a non-committal shrug. "Just asking for a friend." 

"Hey!" called a blonde woman in a low-cut dress at the far end of the bar. "Can I get something to drink here?" The bartender nodded once more toward Louis and hurried off to serve her.

Louis took another long pull from the bottle. Maybe he'd see about getting over to the _Aurora_ next time he had a chance. And maybe, he thought, tipping the last of the ersatz Virgon Brew down his throat, next time he was out drinking, he'd try the beer from the _Harrak_.

* * *

He would have thought that with the settlement of New Caprica, all the resources of the fleet would be strained to the utmost, supporting the fledgling colony. But though the printshop on the _Aurora_ had been moved to a tent on the planet, it had, the printer assured him, plenty of paper.

"We recycled the sheets from the election ballots," said the stout woman who ran the press. "The daily newspaper's printed on that material, and then it gets recycled in turn. We can keep the cycle going indefinitely by adding a little new palm fiber each time." 

The palm-plant was a native shrub with a broad, fibrous leaf. It wasn't edible, but according to Lieutenant Dualla – Commander Adama's wife and the new XO of the Pegasus – there was a distillery somewhere in the settlement that made a potent liquor out of its roots. Dualla came to the planet frequently for meetings with President Baltar, and kept the CIC informed of what was happening on the surface – which was how Louis had found out about the printshop's new location.

"What did you do before you had palm-plant fiber?" he asked, curious.

"Recycled. Reused. Lots of things can be made into paper, if you want it badly enough." She smiled at Louis. "Fortunately for you, though, we've got the palm fiber stock going, so our rates are a lot better than they used to be. So, what do you want printed?"

Rates, he thought glumly. Of course they had to charge. Well, it didn't matter; he'd get it done anyway. "It's a book." 

"What kind of book?"

"Well," he started, then bit his lip. It had been a lot easier dealing with Infinity Books, because he just sent messages to the publisher. He'd never had to talk to him in _person_! "It's…um. I have a friend."

"You have a friend. And?" The publisher's smile began to droop around the edges. She was tapping her foot, sending the unspoken message _I have better things to do than waste my time with you_. 

"My friend has written, um. A romance novel."

Now she looked a little more friendly, though a bit skeptical. "You've – okay, your friend has written a romance novel. And…she, we'll say, would like it published. You know we can't print many copies."

"That's all right. I just want to get it out there." He'd seen the way _Colonial Honor_ had been passed from hand to hand among the women of the _Pegasus_ and the _Galactica_. It had made him feel warm, appreciated. Happy, because it made _them_ happy – it was like doing a good deed secretly, like being a superhero in disguise. In a strange way, he felt he owed it to them to have his new book published. No matter what this woman charged him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the disk, handed it to her. "This is it. It should be around 200 pages."

Her eyebrows lifted. "You've done this – I'm sorry, your _friend_ has done this before, hmm?" She didn't wait for him to answer but turned to a workstation behind her and flipped its switch on. Power cords snaked from its case and out the back of the tent, to a generator in another tent, he guessed, or on one of the grounded ships. She popped in the disk and bent to the screen.

Then she turned around and stared at him. 

"Shiloh Usoi. You've got to be frakking kidding me."

He shrugged. "Infinity wouldn't publish under a man's name."

She went back to the screen, paged down a few times, muttering under her breath. Finally she looked at him again. "Well, I'll be frakked. A new book by Shiloh Usoi. How about twenty copies – no, wait, maybe thirty would be better. What do you think?"

"How much?"

"Twenty, or thirty?"

"No, I meant how much to print twenty copies?"

She burst out laughing. "Honey, I'm not going to charge you a thing. We're going to make a fortune on this."

"That doesn't seem right," he said, frowning. "I mean, nobody has much money."

"Not a literal fortune. Look around you – where would I spend it? But this is going to be a best-seller. So to speak. How many new books do you think are getting printed on New Caprica? How many authors do you think there are in existence right now?"

"Not a lot?" he ventured.

"Not a lot, exactly. And those that we have, well. I don't like to make editorial comments, but, _The Life and Times of Gaius Baltar_?" She shook her head. "Not really a page-turner."

"There's just one thing," said Louis. "I don't want anyone to know. I mean, my involvement. It's not – you won't tell anyone, will you?"

She cocked her head at him. "Is Shiloh Usoi still writing?"

He nodded. He'd had a couple of ideas already, even sketched out an outline for one.

"If Shiloh Usoi wants to publish any more books, I get to print them, right?"

"Right," he said.

The publisher smiled. "Then your secret is safe with me."

* * *

A few weeks later he was on duty in the CIC, and the XO came back up to the _Pegasus_ after a meeting on New Caprica. She was always in a bad mood after these meetings. At least Commander Adama was there, too; if Lieutenant Dualla was going to complain about Baltar, maybe they'd luck out, thought Louis, and she'd take it out on her husband and not on the rest of the crew.

But the XO was…whistling? Louis dared a glance up from his station. She was smiling, and indeed whistling a little, under her breath; and she carried a bound stack of papers under one arm. It looked about the right size…but would Lieutenant Dualla be a romance fan? She made the rounds, checking on all the stations, then settled in to her own desk. After half an hour, he couldn't bear it any longer.

He was about to get up from his station to cross the room – he'd pretend to check one of the monitors, that would give him cover – but the commander caught Dualla first. Oh, it was glorious, him chiding her for reading on duty; and the best part was that he must have bent over to see what it was, for he said something to her, and Louis caught the name "Shiloh".

Oh, yes, he thought, struggling to keep the glee he felt from showing on his face. That was worth it, right there. He was proud of the work he did as communications officer, supporting the ship and what was left of the fleet; but the survivors had settled on New Caprica, now, and they were hidden from the Cylons by the nebula around the system. Maybe there wouldn't be as much for the military to do in the future. 

Maybe he'd write a _lot_ more books.

Because yeah, keeping the colony safe was important. But keeping the colonists happy was important, too. Communication as entertainment was as important as communication for defense; he had only to look at Dualla to see that.

Who was reluctantly putting the book away. But she looked up at the commander – her husband – and said, "But count me out for anything tonight."

"It's just going to be you and the handsome hero in the novel, right?"

The handsome hero. Who had been modeled after Commander Adama.

Louis stifled a laugh, then sobered. If his commanding officer ever found out he'd been written into a romance novel, Louis might find his new career starting sooner than he'd expected.

Now, that was a thought. What about a woman, an officer, who was kicked out of the fleet for some minor offense – nothing big, just something that got her to move to the new colony? And she'd be trying to get her feet under her, get settled, and she could meet…maybe someone like that good-looking man who worked for the President; Louis had noticed him when he'd gone down to the surface to talk to the publisher. There could be some political intrigue and a little angst about the loss of her career to spice up the romance. But of course, there'd be a happy ending.

He checked his screens to see if anything was happening that needed his attention. All quiet; he brought up the word processor, opened a new file, and began to write.


End file.
